One Shot (56 page)

'Not exclusively.'

You got a better idea?'

'What about a full frontal assault? With vehicles?'

Reacher smiled. 'If it absolutely positively has to be
destroyed by morning, call the United States Marine
Corps.' 'Roger that,' Cash said.

'Too dangerous,' Reacher said. We can't give them a
second's warning and we can't turn the place into a
free-fire zone. We've got Rosemary to think about'

Nobody spoke.

'I like the driveway,' Reacher said again.

Cash glanced at Helen Rodin.

'We could just call in the cops,' he said. You know, if
it's the DA who's the bad guy here. A couple of SWAT

teams could do it.'

'Same problem,' Reacher said. 'Rosemary would be
dead before they got near the door.' 'Cut the power
lines? Kill the cameras?'

'Same problem. It's an announcement ahead of time.'

'Your call.'

'The driveway,' Reacher said. 'I like the driveway.'

'But what about the cameras?'

'I'll think of something,' Reacher said. He stepped over
to the table. Stared down at the map. Then he turned
back to Cash. 'Does your truck have a CD player?' Cash
nodded. Tart of the comfort package.'

'Do you mind if Franklin drives it?'

'Franklin can have it. I'd prefer a sedan.'

'OK, your Humvee is our approach vehicle. Franklin
can drive us there, let us out, and then get straight back
here.' 'Us?' Yanni said. 'Are we all going?'

'You bet your ass,' Reacher said. 'Four of us there,
with Franklin back here as the comms centre.' 'Good,'

Yanni said.

"We need cell phones,' Reacher said.

'I've got one,' Yanni said.

'Me too,' Cash said.

'Me too,' Helen said.

'I don't,' Reacher said.

Franklin took a small Nokia out of his pocket.

'Take mine,' he said.

Reacher took it. 'Can you set up a conference call?

Four cell phones and your desk phone? As soon as you
get back here?' Franklin nodded. 'Give me your
numbers.'

'And turn the ringers off,' Reacher said.

'When are we doing this?' Cash asked.

'Four o'clock in the morning is my favourite time,'

Reacher said. 'But they'll be expecting that. We learned
it from them. Four in the morning is when the KGB went
knocking on doors. Least resistance. It's a biorhythm
thing. So we'll surprise them. We'll do it at two thirty.' 'If
you surprise them you don't have to hit them very hard?

' Yanni said.

Reacher shook his head. 'In this situation if we
surprise them they won't hit me very hard.' 'Where am I
going to be?' Cash asked.

'Southwest corner of the gravel plant,' Reacher said.

'Looking south and east at the house. You can cover the
west and the north sides simultaneously. With your
rifle.' 'OK.'

'What did you bring for me?'

Cash dug in the pocket of his windbreaker and came
out with a knife in a sheath. He tossed it across the
room. Reacher caught it. It was a standard-issue Navy
Seal SRK. Their survival-rescue knife. Carbon steel,
black epoxy, seven-inch blade. Not new. 'This is it?'

Reacher said.

'All I've got,' Cash said. 'The only weapons I own are
my rifle and that knife.' 'You're kidding.'

'I'm a businessman, not a psycho.'

'Christ's sake, Gunny, I'll be taking a knife to a
gunfight? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?'

'All I've got,' Cash said again.

'Great'

'You can take a gun from the first one you cut. Face it,
if you don't get close enough to cut one of them you
aren't going to win anyway.' Reacher said nothing.

They waited. Midnight. Twelve thirty. Yanni fiddled with
her cell phone and made a call. Reacher ran through the
plan, one more time. First in his head, then out loud,
until everyone was clear. Details, dispositions,
refinements, adjustments. 'But we might still change
everything,' he said. 'When we get there. No substitute
for seeing the actual terrain.'

They waited. One o'clock. One thirty. Reacher started
to allow himself to think about the endgame. About what
would come after the victory. He turned to Franklin.

'Who is Emerson's number two?' he asked.

'A woman called Donna Bianca,' Franklin said.

'Is she any good?'

'She's his number two.'

'She'll need to be there. Afterwards. It's going to be a
real three-ring circus. Too much for one pair of hands. I
want you to bring Emerson and Donna Bianca out
there. And Alex Rodin, of course. After we win.' 'They'll
be in bed.'

'So wake them up.'

If we win,' Franklin said.

At one forty-five people started to get restless. Helen
Rodin stepped over and squatted down next to
Reacher. She picked up the knife. Looked at it. Put it
back down. 'Why are you doing this?' she asked.

'Because I can. And because of the girl.'

'You'll get yourself killed.'

'Unlikely,' Reacher said. 'These are old men and idiots.

I've survived worse.'

You're just saying that.'

'If I get in OK I'll be safe enough. Room to room isn't
hard. People get very scared with a prowler loose in the
house. They hate it.' 'But you won't get in OK. They'll
see you coming.'

Reacher dug in his left-hand pocket and came out with
the shiny new quarter that had bothered him in the car.

Handed it to her. 'For you,' he said.

She looked at it. 'Something to remember you by?'

'Something to remember tonight by.'

Then he checked his watch. Stood up.

'Let's do it,' he said.

SIXTEEN

THEY STOOD FOR A MOMENT IN THE SHADOWS AND

THE SILENCE ON the parking apron below Franklin's
lighted windows. Then Yanni went to get the Sheryl
Crow CD from her Mustang. She gave it to Cash. Cash
unlocked the Humvee and leaned inside and put it in the
player. Then he gave the keys to Franklin. Franklin
climbed into the driver's seat. Cash got in next to him
with his M24 across his knees. Reacher and Helen
Rodin and Ann Yanni squeezed together in the back.

'Turn the heater up,' Reacher said.

Cash leaned to his left and dialled in maximum
temperature. Franklin started the engine. Backed out
into the street. Swung the wheel and took off west.

Then he turned north. The engine was loud and the
ride was rough. The heater kicked in and the fan blew
hard. The interior grew warm, and then hot. They turned
west, turned north, turned west, turned north, lining up
with the grid that would run through the fields. The drive
was a series of long droning cruises punctuated by
sharp right-angle corners. Then they made the final turn.

Franklin sat up straight behind the wheel and
accelerated hard.

'This is it,' Yanni said. 'Dead ahead, about three miles
to go.'

'Start the music,' Reacher said. 'Track eight.'

Cash hit the button.

Every day is a winding road.

'Louder,' Reacher said.

Cash turned it up. Franklin drove on, sixty miles an
hour.

Two miles,' Yanni called. Then: 'One mile.'

Franklin drove on. Reacher stared out the window to
his right. Watched the fields flash past in the darkness.

Random scatter from the headlights lit them up. The
irrigation booms were turning so slowly they looked
stationary. Mist filled the air. 'High beams,' Reacher
called.

Franklin flicked them on.

'Music all the way up,' Reacher called.

Cash twisted the knob to maximum.

EVERY DAY IS A WINDING ROAD.

'Half a mile,' Yanni yelled.

Windows,' Reacher shouted.

Four thumbs hit four buttons and all four windows
dropped an inch. Hot air and loud music sucked out into
the night. Reacher stared right and saw the dark outline
of the house flash past, isolated, distant, square, solid,
substantial, dimly lit from inside. Flat land all round it.

The limestone driveway, pale, very long, as straight as
an arrow. Franklin kept his foot hard down.

'Stop sign in four hundred yards,' Yanni yelled.

'Stand by,' Reacher shouted. 'Show time.'

'One hundred yards,' Yanni yelled.

'Doors,' Reacher shouted.

Three doors opened an inch. Franklin braked hard.

Stopped dead on the line.

Reacher and Yanni and Helen and Cash spilled out.

Franklin didn't hesitate. He took off again like it was just
a normal dead-of-night stop sign. Reacher and Yanni
and Cash and Helen dusted themselves down and
stood close together on the crown of the road and
stared north until the glow of the lights and the sound
of the engine and the thump of the music were lost in
the distance and the darkness.

Sokolov had picked up the Humvee's heat signature
on both the south and west monitors when it was still
about half a mile shy of the house. Hard not to. A big
powerful vehicle, travelling fast, trailing long plumes of
hot air from open windows, what was to miss? On the
screen it looked like a bottle rocket flying sideways.

Then he heard it too, physically, through the walls. Big
engine, loud music. Vladimir glanced his way.

'Passerby?' he asked.

'Let's see,' Sokolov said.

It didn't slow down. It hurtled straight past the house
and kept on going north. On the screen it trailed heat
like a reentry capsule. Through the walls they heard the
music Doppler-shift like an ambulance's siren as it went
by.

'Passerby,' Sokolov said.

'Some asshole,' Vladimir said.

Upstairs on the third floor Chenko heard it too. He
stepped through an empty bedroom to a west-facing
window and looked out. Saw a big black shape doing
about sixty miles an hour, high-beam headlights, bright
tail lights, music thumping and thudding so loud he
could hear the door panels flexing from two hundred
yards away. It roared past. Didn't slow down. He opened
the window and leaned out and craned his neck and
watched the bubble of light track north into the
distance. It went behind the skeletal tangle of machinery
in the stone crushing plant. But it was still visible as a
moving glow in the air.

After a quarter-mile the glow changed colour. Red now,
not white. Brake lights, flaring for the stop sign. The
glow paused for a second. Then the red colour died and
the glow turned back to white and took off again, fast.

The Zee called up from the floor below: 'Was that him?'

'No,' Chenko called back. 'Just some rich kid out for a
drive.'

Reacher led the way through the dark, four people
single file on the edge of the blacktop with the gravel
plant's high wire fence on their left and huge circular
fields across the road on their right. After the roar of the
diesel and the thump of the music the silence felt
absolute. There was nothing to hear except the hiss of
irrigation water. Reacher raised his hand and stopped
them where the fence turned a right-angle and ran away
east. The corner post was double thickness and braced
with angled spars. Grass and weeds from the shoulder
were clumped up high. He stepped forward and
checked the view. He was on a perfect diagonal from the
northwest corner of the house. He had an equal forty-five degree line of sight to the north facade and the
west. Because of the diagonal the distance was about
three hundred yards. Visibility was very poor. There was
a glimmer of cloudy moonlight, but beyond that there
was nothing at all. He stepped back. Pointed at Cash,
pointed at the base of the corner post.